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Recipe of the Day: The Mother of All Butter Cookies

By Mark Bittman December 9, 2008 10:51 amDecember 9, 2008 10:51 am

Cookies are always easy, but around the holidays, with time short and demand high, even they can use streamlining. One solution is to whip up a single batter and finish it in different ways. Just divide the dough into four parts and add lemon juice and zest to one quarter, chopped walnuts to the second, raisins to the third and coconut to the fourth. The variations are infinite — post your ideas or suggestions in the comments section below — but this basic batter is great plain too.

The Mother of All Butter Cookies

Yield About 4 dozen cookies

Time About 30 minutes, or more if cookies are baked in batches

Mark Bittman

Summary

Here I've refined the classic cookie recipe to do all the mixing in the food processor. Because it's such a powerful machine, it's easy to overdevelop the gluten in the flour, which leads to tough cookies. My solution is to replace a quarter of the flour with cornstarch, which develops no gluten and, as a bonus, adds a silken quality. Even so, it's important to process the ingredients gently. If you’re making the cookies with an electric mixer or a wooden spoon, cream the butter and sugar together before adding the dry ingredients.

Ingredients

1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour

1/2 cup cornstarch

3/4 cup sugar

Pinch salt

2 sticks chilled unsalted butter, cut into bits

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1 egg

1/2 cup milk, approximately

Method

1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Combine flour, cornstarch, sugar and salt in a food processor, and pulse once or twice. Add butter, and pulse 10 or 20 times, until butter and flour are well combined. Add vanilla and egg and pulse 3 or 4 times. Add about half the milk and pulse 2 or 3 times. Add the remaining milk a little at a time, pulsing once or twice after each addition, until the dough holds together in a sticky mass.

2. Remove the dough from the machine to one or more bowls. Make cookies as described in Step 3, or make any of the variations below.

3. To make cookies, drop rounded teaspoons of dough (you can make the cookies larger or smaller, if you like) onto a nonstick baking sheet, a sheet lined with parchment paper or a lightly buttered sheet. If you want flat cookies, press the balls down a bit with your fingers or the back of a spatula or wooden spoon. Bake 11 minutes, or until the cookies are done as you like them. Cool on a rack, then store, if necessary, in a covered container.

Variations

* Butterscotch cookies: Substitute brown sugar for half or more of the white sugar, or simply add 1 tablespoon of molasses along with the egg.

* Citrus cookies: Omit the vanilla, and add 1 tablespoon of lemon or orange juice and 2 teaspoons grated lemon or orange rind along with the egg. A couple of tablespoons of poppy seeds can also be added.

* Chocolate chip cookies: Stir in about 1 cup of chocolate chips. (The butterscotch variation is good with chocolate chips.)

* Ginger cookies: Add 1 tablespoon ground dried ginger to the dry ingredients. For even better flavor, add 1/4 cup minced crystallized ginger to the batter by hand (this works well in addition to or in place of the ground ginger).

Or you can make rolled cookies by freezing the dough for 15 minutes or refrigerating it for at least 1 hour. Working half the dough at a time, roll it out on a lightly floured surface; the dough will absorb some flour at first but will soon become less sticky. Do not add more flour than necessary. Roll about 1/4 inch thick, and cut with cookie cutters; decorate as you like. Bake as above, reducing the cooking time to 8 to 10 minutes.

Sugar dissolves in water, not fat. By creaming the dry with the butter, the butter evenly coats all of the flour particles. That means very little gluten formation. That means yummy, crumbly, sandy cookies. You can make these with the creaming method, I’m sure, but the texture will be a little firmer. As a matter of fact, make them with the creaming method if you want to roll and cut them–they’ll be easier to deal with.

By the ‘if you want flat cookies, press…’ I am assuming that they don’t flatten out themselves when baked. If not, could they be turned into ‘thumbprint’ cookies by making a little well with a finger and filling to one’s hearts’ desire?

Just a hint: cookie dough benefits immensely from being refrigerated for 1-3 days before cooking. That gives time for the flour in the dough to absorb a better amount of moisture from the wet ingredients. It’s one of those things our grandmothers knew but that took Cooks Illustrated to demonstrate empirically to make us pay attention.

I made these and they were terrible. I put chocolate chips in 1/3 of the dough, baked them, ate a couple then threw them and the rest of the dough out. They were very brown on the outside and bottoms, almost raw on the inside.

bittman isn’t here to kowtow to our needs. moreover, he offers a solution for those without food processors: “If you’re making the cookies with an electric mixer or a wooden spoon, cream the butter and sugar together before adding the dry ingredients”

1. Cream together butter and sugar
2. Blend in salt and vanilla
3. Beat in egg until thoroughly mixed (if you’re using eggs)
4. Add liquid, if any — this is where you’ve stumped me, Mark; if these are truly butter cookies, why have you added milk?
5. Add dry ingredients until all are incorporated.

These cookies were AWFUL. Corn starch? That doesn’t give them a “silken quality,” it apparently makes them taste like cornstarch. Yuck.

They didn’t cook evenly (I think because of the corn starch), even with two sticks of butter they tasted of nothing except the corn starch, the texture was horrendous, they look terrible. There is absolutely nothing positive I can say about these cookies.

Rice flour is an admirable substitute for the cornstarch (rice flour is standard, in fact, in classic Scottish shortbread cookies) as it it also gluten-free, but it brings a toothsome quality that cornstarch can’t touch.

I just made these and sadly, they were a big flop! I followed the directions precisely, except that I chilled the dough about 30 minutes before baking. The cookies were flatter than pancakes and did not have the consistency of a butter cookie. They were kind of mealy and not very buttery, even though I used a very good quality European butter. What could I have done wrong?

Dear Mark,
Can you adjust your receipe? Also can you address the concerns of the people who tried the receipe. I have baked many butter cookies, but i never heard of
‘corn starch’
included in the receipe. Could this be an error?
Would love to try them but only will after your expert imput and adjustments.

AWFUL COOKIES – THERE HAS TO BE A MISTAKE IN THIS RECIPE! They tasted like baked cardboard. Not even 2 sticks of butter saved them! I think Mr. Bittman owes us an explanation as to why so many of us got the same results, especially after crowning them “The Mother of All Butter Cookies!” I used a food processor, measured all ingredients, refrigerated them a day ahead of baking them, and yes, I have a separate oven thermometer inside the oven to ensure the 375 degree temp.

LOL the Mother of All Butter Cookies indeed. I’m laughing my biscuits off reading these comments. Geez Mark I love you but how can so many people have ended up with cardboard?? I’ll stick with my basic butter cookie recipe….it was good enough for my nana back in the 40’s, it was good enough for my mom, and it still gets rave reviews in this century. No milk, that’s for sure.

okay so another butter cookie, can anyone out there possibly know how to make the Italian bakery cookie that is sandwiched together with jam/jelly dipped in chocolate and has sprinkles on the end. Am on a quest to find that right cookie taste texture, all butter cookies seem to sweet or buttery. this specific cookie from the italian bakery is more yellow in color (maybe food coloring or more yolk not sure) crumbly, not to sweet and a dryer type sandwich cookie than any other butter cookie I have made. any ideas on what type of base cookie dough it is or even better a recipe. thanks….
fran